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Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? Audiobook
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Publisher Description
"[Oliver Wyman's] skillful, nuanced performance is enough to keep listeners from tossing their earbuds aside in despair...This isn't easy listening, but it's essential for anyone concerned about humanity's future." — AudioFile Magazine
This program includes a foreword read by the author.
Thirty years ago Bill McKibben offered one of the earliest warnings about climate change. Now he broadens the warning: the entire human game, he suggests, has begun to play itself out.
Bill McKibben’s groundbreaking book The End of Nature -- issued in dozens of languages and long regarded as a classic -- was the first book to alert us to global warming. But the danger is broader than that: even as climate change shrinks the space where our civilization can exist, new technologies like artificial intelligence and robotics threaten to bleach away the variety of human experience.
Falter tells the story of these converging trends and of the ideological fervor that keeps us from bringing them under control. And then, drawing on McKibben’s experience in building 350.org, the first truly global citizens movement to combat climate change, it offers some possible ways out of the trap. We’re at a bleak moment in human history -- and we’ll either confront that bleakness or watch the civilization our forebears built slip away.
Falter is a powerful and sobering call to arms, to save not only our planet but also our humanity.
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"McKibben's well-crafted book is an essential warning to humanity, a balanced call on climate change, genetic engineering, longevity scams, and ultimate meaning and value in the human game. We may not have much time left to salvage many things we have come to expect which contribute to quality of life. The only somewhat negative aspect to this audiobook is the narration -- not by McKibben himself, but I found Wyman's reading to be too light, betraying the utter gravitas of the topic. "
— TomC (4 out of 5 stars)
Quotes
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“A love letter, a plea, a eulogy, and a prayer. This is Bill McKibben at his glorious best.”
— Naomi Klein, New York Times bestselling author -
“A veteran environmental writer…turns the possibility of human extinction (from climate change, artificial intelligence, etc.) into an absorbing analysis with a glimmer of hope.”
— New York Times Book Review -
“Falter is McKibben’s most powerfully argued book and maybe his most important since The End of Nature thirty years ago…It affirms him as among a very few of our most compelling truth-tellers about the climate catastrophe and the ideological forces driving it.”
— Nation -
“No one has done more than Bill McKibben to raise awareness about the great issues of our time. Falter is an essential book―honest, far-reaching, and, against the odds, hopeful.”
— Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize-winning author -
“[An] unsettling look at the prospects for human survival. . . . Readers open to inconvenient and sobering truths will find much to digest in McKibben’s eloquently unsparing treatise.”
— Publishers Weekly (starred review) -
“[A] deeply caring, eloquently reasoned inquiry into environmental and techno-utopian threats…Profoundly compelling and enlightening, McKibben balances alarm with hope.”
— Booklist (starred review) -
“A compelling call for change.”
— Kirkus Reviews -
“The sobering introduction [is] read by the author…[Narrator Oliver] Wyman spotlights sporadic moments of humor and hope and channels McKibben’s withering rage toward the powerful few who suppress climate action in favor of personal wealth. This isn’t easy listening, but it’s essential for anyone concerned about humanity’s future.”
— AudioFile -
[E]ssential for anyone concerned about humanity's future.
— AudioFile Magazine
Awards
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A New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice
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A #1 Amazon.com bestseller in Social Aspects of Technology
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New York Times bestseller
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Among longlisted titles for Washington Post Best Books of the Year, 2019
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Among longlisted titles for Washington Post Best Books of the Year, 2019
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About Bill McKibben
Bill McKibben is the author of more than a dozen books, including the New York Times bestseller Falter, as well as the 1989 work The End of Nature, which was the first book to warn the general public about the climate crisis. He is the Schumann Distinguished Scholar in Environmental Studies at Middlebury College in Vermont and the winner of the Gandhi Prize, the Thomas Merton Prize, and the Right Livelihood Prize, sometimes called “the alternate Nobel.” He founded the global grassroots climate campaign 350.org; his new project, organizing people over sixty for progressive change, is called Third Act.
About Bill McKibben
Oliver Wyman is an actor and award-winning audiobook narrator. He has won five Audie Awards from the Audio Publisher’s Association, fourteen Earphone Awards, and two Listen Up Awards from Publisher’s Weekly. He was named a 2008 Best Voice in Nonfiction & Culture by AudioFile magazine. He has appeared on stage as well as in film and television, and he is a veteran voice actor who can be heard in numerous cartoons and video games. He is one of the founders of New York City’s Collective Unconscious theater, and his performances include the award-winning “reality play” Charlie Victor Romeo and A. R. McElhinney’s cult classic film A Chronicle of Corpses.